Remembrance of the 30 million Chinese died in World War II: "Only the Slaughtered Have the Right to Forgive, the Survived Have No Right to Forget"
According to a New York Times report from Tokyo on March 6, Japan's rightwing parliament members of the Liberal Democratic Party can't hold back chuckles as they are defeating its government attempt to apologize to the world for Japan's naked aggression against its neighboring countries fifty years ago. They repeat the old jive in which Japan was supposedly drawn into the war by a hostile world, especially the Americans -- therefore the sneaky attack of Pearl Harbor was a justified preemptive strike.
They choose to forget that Japan invaded the Northeastern China, Manchuria, in 1931 -- long before the escalation of the war in the rest of the Asia and the Pacific. Its military forces systematically murdered and raped millions of Chinese civilians under the "Shan-Guang Directive", i.e. the "Kill All, Burn All, and Take All" military policy, in the ten years prior to its military conflict with the America.
December 1937, Japan's Imperial Army entered the Chinese capital city and collectively committed the most horrible war crime in history - "RAPE OF NANJING", six weeks of wanton killing of 340,000 civilians and raping of tens of thousands of young girls and women. But, prominent political and business Japanese leaders of the 1990's shamelessly insist that it NEVER HAPPENED. What happens in Bosnia-Herzegovina today had repeatedly happened in China six decades ago. Does history simply repeat itself as commonly believed or we too often fail to prevent tragedy of this kind returning?
Despite the unbelievable magnitude of the Nanjing Massacre known to the world now and then, it was proportionally 'a minor event' during the Sino-Japanese war, in which more than 30 million Chinese perished. Nowadays, Japanese ultra-nationalists call their years of atrocities: "Defense of the East Asia" -- also the name of a multi-million dollar memorial museum funded by the conservative Japanese parliament.
Where is the sense of honor that the Japanese people most cherish?!
-Alliance for Preserving the Truth of Sino-Japanese War-
It is a group organized by citizens' organizations of Chinese-American groups which are active in seeking apologies for the Nanking Massacre, as well as compensation for victims. Membership includes more than 300 people, among them scholars and journalists who gathered at Cupertino, California on December 10th and 11th of 1994.
(3/7/95)
Ignatius Y. Ding, Secretary, Alliance for Preserving the Truth of Sino-Japanese War
We look forward to receiving comments and opinions from you. Please send e-mail to smn-feedback@eccosys.com